The US Homeland Security Department ordered border agents to verify that every international student who arrives in the country has a valid student visa. The new procedure is the government's first security change directly related to the Boston Marathon bombings last month.

As the fires were finally put out in West yesterday, this small Texas town was beginning to come to terms with news that at least 11 of its citizens were dead, following a huge blast at a fertiliser plant on Wednesday evening, which also injured around 160 people.

How do you survive a fire? The YBA Richard Patterson lost four paintings in the east London Momart warehouse fire that destroyed much of Charles Saatchi's art collection in 2004. Losing art works like this is devastating for any artist –Tracey Emin's tent and works by Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume were also lost. Patterson has painstakingly remade one of these paintings and it will appear in a new show at London's Timothy Taylor Gallery this month.

Just last year Ghassan Hitto was an IT executive in Dallas whose focus was probably lines of code or how to deliver a project on time. But today he was giving a speech in Istanbul in which he insisted his new priority was to utilise “all conceivable means” to topple President Bashar al-Assad and provide desperately-needed aid to the beleaguered people of Syria.